Windows Vista has its share of compatibility problems, but when a senior Microsoft employee is dispatched to a customer to fix a driver issue, things are bad.  The average consumer will never get this level of help but one Charles Walling did get it.

The SeatlePI must be reaching for stories because this isn’t really news; in fact, it’s not much of anything.  Yet here I am writing about it.  The headline “Man gets Windows Vista to work with printer” reads like something The Onion would print.

Charles Walling was trying to get his Dell 942 printer to work in Windows Vista but it wouldn’t.  He had installed the XP drivers at first which were not compatible with Vista.  Then he installed the proper Windows Vista drivers which also did not work.

The problem was not that the drivers for XP did install but installed to the wrong location because of the new directory lay out and security measures that Vista has to prevent certain changes.  The drivers were simply blocked from functioning correctly.

Installing the Vista drivers didn’t help because both of them together did no play nice.  The Windows XP driver could not be uninstalled.

Tom White, the test manager for documents and printing in Microsoft’s Windows Experience group was sent out to Walling’s home to diagnose and fix the problem.

White was able to fix the computer by downloading a patch from Dell that removes the XP driver which allows the installation of a clean Vista driver.  Things were not made easy by Walling’s slow dial-up connection.  But, the printer is working, Vista is happy with it and Microsoft lived happily ever after.  The end.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 4:27 pm under Microsoft, Opinion, Uncategorized, Vista.  Print This Post

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